Friday Fictioneers – Communique AF/9589-T1

PHOTO PROMPT © AJ Wilson

An object has been found. A citizen riding a horse encountered the aforementioned in the forest. This has rendered it impossible for your government to continue in its previous of policy of not noticing the object’s existence. A committee has been formed to officially notice and classify the thing. Experts will be called. We shall be making no comment on theories in social media about what the object is and whence it came. Citizens are advised that there is no danger.

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.Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Two Doors

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

There’s special spots around this world. If you know how to look, you can find them—places where the barrier’s worn thin between here and afar. One lies at the confluence of the White and Blue Nile, Others are set into quite ordinary streets.

Don’t frown at me that way, mate—I’m not funning you. Buy me another beer and I’ll tell you. Oh, you’re a gent, that’s better. How do you recognize them? Perspective. The perspective’s off, like, foreshortened.

What can you do there? Why, walk through, of course. But there’s always two doors. Don’t choose the wrong one.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Generative Pre-trained Transformer

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

OK, I’m lazy. But why put in the work when a machine can do it for you?

It’s not like I don’t know how. I span golden webs of emotional prose for two decades, ever since the online world matured. Believe me, I understand how to craft a tale to tug at the heartstrings and evoke exactly the response I want.

Now, I only have to slip-in the right query. “Write me a series of letters that will get a rich widow to part with her savings.” And then I pop it into the mailer. 

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – The Spell

PHOTO PROMPT © Rowena Curtin

There is, in these practiced motions, a kind of ease—a release. My wrist relaxes into the twist of unscrewing, my hand and eye into the coordinated pour and apportioning of quantity. It’s all about craft skill, the reassurance of know-how.

This may not be “eye of newt and toe of frog”, but still I feel connected to a line of mages. As I stir, the steps follow easily, one from another—they make sense, and so I make sense. And, though the exercise of control may be illusory, the ritual of control is real.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Running on Joy

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

Sands sift slowly. Already, the city is half buried, and, one day, all hint of these creatures ‘existence will vanish. We can only guess at the purpose of some of their devices, but our find is clear—this a vehicle garage.  

Perhaps it was a museum of transport because the power sources belong to different technological eras. The black one ran on carbon and seems the most primitive, while the grey one is electrical and must date later. The green device is mysterious and we don’t know how it was powered.

I believe it may have run on joy.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Ethan

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

“Ethan, Ethan,” the girl beside me screams, her arms outstretched to the distant stage.

Elsewhere in the crowd, fans cry out for their favourites, but those nearby catch the call. “Ethan, Ethan.”

Call and refrain: a bubble rising from the deep, a colour washing through the palette. Green, let’s name our colour green. Our green spreads and ripples through the roiling host. Now it’s half the stadium, pulsing and merging with the wash of yellow from the other wall.

I belong. It’s us—we are the living thing, we are the spectacle and the glory. Here we manufacture gods.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Indecision

PHOTO PROMPT © Amanda Forestwood

What if the edge of the world is at the top? What if there’s a sheer drop?

I step onto the first moss-covered step, and the trees seem to bend in a little closer to spy. An elegant fern unbends and caresses my face, depositing dew on my cheek. The moist air carries scent of earth and stone and decay and growth. Surely, there’s magic in this place, this stairway leading to a revelation.

A peewit calls “Don’t do it, don’t do it”, and I am unable to place my next step. Is it better to remain unknowing but safe?

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Blood orange and red onion

PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

I am afraid. Not of poison—the salad, drizzled in olive oil, is delicious. But I am terrified of what the dish means. The message could not be more obvious: blood orange and red onion salad. This is a screaming scarlet warning.

“Run” this meal is saying,” and never look back.”

I had thought Jan my dear friend, but what I see on the plate tells me otherwise. Waiting for dessert would be foolish.

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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Memories of memories

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

I do not remember you. Yes, I can bring an image to mind, your hair a crazy tangle in the wind, and lips sensuously curled in a smile. I remember that likeness, but I don’t remember you. There are memories of remembering you. Is it possible, I wonder, to track back from that and excavate the original? When people say “she was wonderful”, I can recall telling the story of how we first met, but the freshness of the event has vanished in the recitation. All but one picture which survives—your bottom in tight denim. .

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Mimesis

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

It took years of furtive genetic experimentation. At last, she was ready to plant out the thicket.

For a decade more, she watched it rise behind the construction palisade, until it achieved height and density and bloom. The interlaced branches and the canopy perfectly replicated the appearance of a four-storey tenement block, albeit a garishly painted one. Buds opened in the shape of windows and barked boughs simulated brickwork.

On the east side of the city, she hid her forest in plain sight and set off into its heart to find her woodsman’s cottage.

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Couldn’t resist a second bite. Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here